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A Secret Ingredient for Success

Have you ever given up learning to play a musical instrument because your first attempts sounded like dying wildlife?

Have you ever given up learning a language because the first time you went to use it amongst native speakers you ordered coffee with milk and a pig?

Given up on a sport because no one selected you at the try outs?

Taken a different career path because you didn’t get that job?

What makes someone outstanding at what they do?

What makes Michael Jordan a brilliant basketball player?

What makes Emma Dean Australia's Masterchef?

What makes Tiger Woods an amazing golfer?

What do Emma Dean do when she make a mistake?

She analyses her mistakes, learn from her experience and then cook another meal. Have you ever heard of a chef that gave up the business after preparing one dud meal? Of course not! Yet we ourselves do this all the time.

A Secret Ingredient

In analysing the life stories of all successful people there is a theme that occurs over and over again. Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, James Cook, Richard Branson, Walt Disney, Michael Jordan and Colonel Saunders to name but a handful all knew what the key element is.

They had the secret ingredient for success and it wasn’t just eleven different herbs and spices.

It was perseverance.

Plain, old fashioned, never-give-up-ness. If you fail, try again, and again, and again until you succeed. If one way doesn’t, work try another and another and so on. What worked yesterday might not work today so try something new. It is this ability to persevere that separates those who attempt from those who succeed and those who would be from those who are.

How do they do this I hear you ask?

Simple really, it’s how successful people view failure. Failure is not an end. It is the means unto an end. It is a valuable part of the learning experience that paves the road to success. It teaches us what not to do to get where we want to go. If we like our Master Chefs analyse the failure we can know better what to do when we try again so that If something doesn’t taste good we try something different.

So next time you burn the Cornflakes, remember the motto of Captain Taggart from the late nineties parody film Galaxy Quest “Never give up, never surrender!”